Investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure and renewable energy could generate about $200 billion in cumulative commercial insurance premiums between 2026 and 2030, as the global economy enters a new capital expenditure cycle, Swiss Re Institute has said.
The reinsurer, however, warned that the same investment boom is creating larger and more interconnected risks for insurers, as data centres, energy systems and other strategic infrastructure become increasingly concentrated in particular locations and dependent on shared physical and digital networks.
According to Swiss Re Institute’s latest sigma report, Time to build: Expanding the frontier of insurability for the capex super-cycle, AI data centres and renewable energy infrastructure are emerging as major drivers of new insurance demand.
The report said global energy investment is expected to reach $3.4 trillion in 2026, with about $2.2 trillion going towards renewables, nuclear power, electricity grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, energy efficiency and electrification.
At the same time, the five largest US hyperscalers are expected to spend nearly $800 billion on AI-related capital expenditure this year, while global data-centre capital expenditure is estimated to exceed $1 trillion.
Swiss Re said the scale of these investments is changing the risk profile of data centres, which are increasingly moving from conventional information technology assets to strategic infrastructure supporting large parts of the digital economy.
The facilities require substantial amounts of electricity and rely on telecommunications, cooling systems, cloud infrastructure and other services, creating multiple points at which a disruption could spread beyond a single site.
Gianfranco Lot, Swiss Re’s chief underwriting officer, P&C Re, said the growth of AI infrastructure was creating opportunities across several insurance lines while also increasing risk concentrations.
“We are seeing the digital economy become a real economy. AI needs data centres, power grids and increasingly complex infrastructure – and all of it needs insurance,” Lot said.
He added that insurers’ ability to provide capacity would depend on their ability to understand and manage the associated risks, including the potential for severe losses.
Swiss Re identified four structural factors that are increasing the accumulation of risk: the growing size of individual assets, geographic clustering, supply-chain dependencies and shared physical and digital networks.
The factors can reinforce one another, meaning a single disruption could potentially affect multiple policyholders, industries and insurance lines at the same time.
Some AI data-centre campuses, including their computing equipment, could cost as much as $50 billion to replace, according to the report. Data centres also tend to cluster in locations where power, land, water and connectivity are readily available, further increasing the concentration of exposure.
Swiss Re said the challenge for insurers was not necessarily a shortage of capital, but the ability to deploy that capital confidently against increasingly complex risks.
Large infrastructure projects often have limited operating histories, making it harder to estimate the frequency and severity of potential losses. At the same time, the concentration of assets and the possibility of extreme losses can make it more difficult for insurers to diversify their exposures.
The report identified the operational phase of these projects as a growing area of concern for insurers. While construction risks are relatively well understood, the commissioning of high-value equipment introduces additional property, business interruption, contingent business interruption and liability exposures.
In some cases, Swiss Re said, the financial losses arising from an interruption could exceed the cost of physical damage to the infrastructure itself.
Jérôme Haegeli, group chief economist and head of Swiss Re Institute, said the scale of investment in infrastructure was creating new dependencies across power systems, supply chains and digital networks.
He said insurance would be important to making the new infrastructure resilient and financeable.
Swiss Re said insurers would need engineering-led underwriting, improved risk modelling and stronger accumulation management to assess the exposures created by the new investment cycle.
It also recommended spreading large risks across insurers, reinsurers and capital markets to distribute exposures across multiple balance sheets and maintain insurance capacity for major infrastructure projects.
